Prof. Mark Regnerus has been giving interviews about his study on parents who’ve had same-sex relationships, saying things like this:

Well, in the generation that are adults now, kids raised in a same-sex household were more likely to experience instability and shifting household arrangements. For example, 14 percent of kids whose moms had a lesbian relationship reported spending more time in foster care, well above the average of 2 percent among all respondents.

That leapt out at me because the error is obvious: The second sentence in no way supports the first. Children whose “moms had a lesbian relationship” weren’t necessarily “raised in a same-sex household” — the children might have never even met their mother’s lesbian partner, much less have been raised by her. Jim Burroway has done some great work pointing this out, and I’d like to extend it. In fact, I’d like to go so far as to show that Regnerus himself admits that he has, well, nothing.

Regnerus’s team interviewed 15,058 people. Few of them had a gay parent; even fewer lived with their gay parent’s partner for a significant time; and fewer still came from what Regnerus calls a “‘planned’ gay family.”

Respondents who:

“Lesbian” mother

“Gay” father

Had a parent in a same-sex relationship

175

73

Lived with parent’s same-sex partner more than 3 years

40

1

Came from “planned” gay families (estimated)

30 – 45

less than 1

A couple points:

Regnerus is fond of talking about “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers,” but he defines them as adults who have ever had a same-sex romantic relationship, even if it only happened once, even if it only lasted a few days.

Regnerus has no data on “planned gay families.” He derived those numbers from looking at “respondents who claimed that (1) their biological parents were never married or lived together, and that (2) they never lived with a parental opposite-sex partner or with their biological father.” The numbers are a guess.

Back to those numbers, though. Regnerus obviously can’t draw any conclusions male same-sex parenting based on a sample of less than 1. How about lesbian same-sex parenting? Is his sample of 30-45 respondents enough to significantly describe the broader population?

No. Not unless the total nation-wide population of adults raised by two lesbian parents is about 50 or fewer. And I suspect it’s more.

Here’s the kicker: Regnerus agrees with me. His article bemoans the low sample sizes of studies that offered up good results for same-sex parenting:

It is not surprising that statistically-significant differences would not emerge in studies employing as few as 18 or 33 or 44 cases of respondents with same-sex parents, respectively…Even analyzing matched samples, as a variety of studies have done, fails to mitigate the challenge of locating statistically-significant differences when the sample size is small.

Look at the numbers in that quote. Now look back at the numbers in the table. This is Regnerus telling us he’s got, as I said, nothing.

Now here’s why this is so ugly.

In the study’s introduction, Regnerus frames it as an examination of same-parenting and a corrective to flaws in earlier, positive studies on same-sex parenting.

But Regnerus’s data on same-sex parenting contains the same sample-size flaws for which he which criticized those other studies.

So once he leaves his introduction and enters analysis, he abandons all pretense of studying same-sex parenting and focuses instead on parents who have ever had a same-sex romantic relationship, regardless of whether they raised a child with that same-sex partner.

Nevertheless, he does not correct his introduction in order to frame the issue properly.

And finally, he grants interviews to conservative outlets, claiming that his study shows the harm of same-sex parenting, even though his own words, in his own study, demonstrate that he knows his sample size is just too damn small to say anything with confidence.

Am I wrong to call this ugly? Prof. Regnerus could well be following this blog, given Jim’s excellent and well-publicized work. I hope the professor provides us an explanation and justification for what he’s telling the press.

No, of course not. The dishonesty in the way he tells the press one thing and admits something entirely different in his study is glaring. This level of dishonesty casts further doubt on every aspect of his study.

I, for one, believe Dr. Regnerus deserves a hearty pat on the back for admitting, when he’s put under pressure to do so, that his methodology was flawed and that he doesn’t really reach the conclusions he claims to have reached.

Now, if he would just admit all that to the conservative outlets who are currently citing his study and openly and publicly withdraw his conclusions he’d actually demonstrate the honesty and integrity which were left out of his study.

Additionally, if a lesbian or gay father (or straight parent) adopted a child out of the foster care system, that child in Regnerus’s study is still considered to have spent time in foster care, reducing the meaningfulness of “spending time in foster care” as an outcome at all, though the study implicitly treats it as a negative.

Exactly. It is clear that Regnerus is a bad faith actor. This is why I am comfortable comparing him to Paul Cameron.

Unfortunately, I think that this study will linger around for *much* longer than the Spitzer study. There are two reasons for this. First, the Spitzer study was finallyrepudiated by its author, and I don’t see any evidence Regnerus has the integrity to do likewise. Second, there’s nothing wrong with the study per se, just the implied conclusions its author is underhandedly selling to conservative organizations and news outlets.

I choose to believe in karma because I can’t bear the thought of this kind of duplicitous behavior going unpunished.

I’m sure I speak for Jim, Rob, and Daniel when I say that Box Turtle Bulletin will happily give Mark Regnerus all the space he needs to explain why his research does not appear to correlate with his claims.

Even if he retracted his study right now (which of course is never going to happen), the damage is done. They’re going to cite this for years. Just as they aren’t going to stop citing the Spitzer “ex-gay” study, although he know admitted that it was bogus

@Alec
Even aside from the conclusions he draws, the questions he asked and the way he ordered the people into groups is highly questionable. It really starts with his silly definition of “gay parent”. For all we know, some of them are bisexual and the relationship broke apart for totally unrelated reasons.

It’s not at all subtle or nuanced that Regnerus answers the first, most generic question of the interview with stats on foster care.

Look at the question he was answering, though: How is the life of a child raised in a same-sex household different than the life of a child raised with a mother and father?

Asked directly about IBFs, he goes directly to foster care (which is barely mentioned in the published study, and for which detailed stats aren’t included). By its very definition, IBFs and families with foster care experience are mutually exclusive:

IBF: Lived in intact biological family (with mother and father) from 0 to 18, and parents are still married at present

Any respondent whose straight bio parents experienced instability leading to foster care falls out of the IBF category, probably to the “other” category, right? Exceptions would be torturously rare. (Parents with no extended family available, hospitalized for 6+ months by a car accident, followed by full recovery, maybe.)

Even though it may not be large enough to be a representative sample, I’d still be very interested in seeing the survey results for the 30-35 planned lesbian families and the 1 planned gay male family. Is this breakout of the data available somewhere or do we need to request it from Regnerus?

Wow.
The comment threads here are amazing, in comparison to the anti gay comment threads that articles from Maggie Gallagher and other anti gay conservatives contribute to TownHall.

Our gang is so much more informed, and just outright more rational than what comments get written there. I mean those people are so crazy and sometimes amazingly stupid and I’d like to know why.

I mean it’s very different from the tongue in cheek stuff and sarcasm that happens at say, JMG.

I have long experience, and most of you do too, with WND and TH and the subject of gay and transgender folks generates a lot more interest and commentary than ANY other subjects that TH has to offer.
It’s so weird how so lacking in facts the comments are, and the usual suspects don’t care when confronted with people who actually just might know something they don’t.
But they’d never admit it.

XGW is another example. Dr. Brown has left comments there, and he has his own column in TH.
The comments written in XGW were so much smarter than coming from those in TH.

He’s most attractive to some remarkably dumb people. Nothing to be flattered about. But I bet he is.

This is getting more and more bizar becasue in fact Dr. Regernus said that he only had 2 true lesbains in his study. And that these children did great (he said this in an e-mail to me). Interview with CBS-

“Other critics have alluded to the study’s funding from conservative groups the Witherspoon Institute and the Bradley Foundation, suggesting Regnerus had a right-wing agenda.

Regnerus defended his study to HealthPop, saying he set out to do a population-based study, which is considered the “gold standard” in his field. Other study’s samples, he said, interviewed “convenient samples” of people researchers knew, friends, or groups that are linked together somehow, but he wanted a totally random sampling.

“People will say I’m irresponsible without weighing in with stronger data,” he said. “This is the best quality data we’ve seen so far. If they don’t like the results, I’m sorry.”

Regnerus was upfront about the funding from conservative groups, and said he pledged to groups involved that he would report whatever the data found, regardless of which way it leaned. What’s more, he says some of the criticisms are valid and plausible.

“There are some valid criticisms that are being made, such as the measurement decision on who should be called a lesbian mother in this study,” Regnerus said. “People might say that’s irresponsible to do this study without all these stable lesbian couples in the study,” he said, adding the random sampling only found two out of the 175 children who said they lived in a home with both same-sex parents throughout all 18 years. “I would have been happy to compare them but they did not exist in large enough numbers.”

Regnerus said it’s entirely possible that instability in the household led to some of the reported negative outcomes in adult children of same-sex parents. He said children of heterosexual couples in an unstable home were also found to fare worse than those in a stable environment.

“People gay or straight should stick with their partners, he said. “I think the study provides evidence of that.”

He co-wrote an entire book about covenant marriage, which is a religious contract that makes divorce all but impossible, even in cases where it is warranted. And he authored another “study” in which he warns about the grave threat same-sex marriage poses

“For example, 14 percent of kids whose moms had a lesbian relationship reported spending more time in foster care, well above the average of 2 percent among all respondents.”

Thom has a good point about same-sex families adopting out of foster care, which has become common over the last 20 years, including with older kids. But there’s another aspect.

Up until the 1970’s (even later in some states), a mother could have her kids taken away just because she was a lesbian. As late as 1995, Mary Ward’s daughter was taken away, solely because Mary was a lesbian, and placed with the father – even though he’d done time in prison for killing his first wife. It’s absurd circular logic to take children away from GLBT parents and then trumpet that this proves their children’s lives are less stable.

I urge everyone to contact the editor, and the publisher (Elsevier) to alert them that their credibility is potentially at stake here. No journal wants to be regarded as the vehicle for a right-wing hit job that constitutes bad science — it’s contrary to their mission. Keep the issues focused on the flaws in the study, and on the researcher’s own comments.

The injection of this flawed study into a highly politicized environment in which news media shorthands results into a single sentence is also a serious issue — it speaks to the ethical outlook of the journal, and it’s obligations to the research community and society at large.

The journal should be welcoming rebuttals letters to the editor from peers, and the editor should consider writing a letter himself to distance the journal from the way the data was handled here. We should insist on nothing less.

If the science were good and we just didn’t like the news, that would be one thing… but we have the author himself discussing the lack of data with which to draw the conclusions he has. The next logical question has to be ‘then why publish’, and I’m concerned that the answer is notoriety and attention — which he has certainly drawn.

Christopher – he is not deserving of a hearty pat on the back at all. If you’re going to publish seriously flawed work I have to question your professional ethics, especially here where we’re talking about foster children and family courts breaking up families as a result of his work.

He knows perfectly well that non-social scientists do a terrible job of interpreting the fullness of the paper – they want a 20 word summation. What we have here is “The gold standard research shows negative outcomes for gay and lesbian families relative to intact heterosexual families) — except that he knows that’s not what he measured.

Knowing that, yet moving forward with publishing it, does not serve as grounds for a retraction by the journal (that would have to be a situation in which the data was falsified or the handling was compromised), but it does warrant strongly worded letters in follow-up editions, and possibly a call to replace the editor of the journal.

Tara TSAW
I didn’t know that! ThisUp until the 1970â€²s (even later in some states), a mother could have her kids taken away just because she was a lesbian. As late as 1995, Mary Wardâ€™s daughter was taken away, solely because Mary was a lesbian, and placed with the father â€“ even though heâ€™d done time in prison for killing his first wife. Itâ€™s absurd circular logic to take children away from GLBT parents and then trumpet that this proves their childrenâ€™s lives are less stable.

Another famous one was the Sharon Bottoms case in 1993 in Virginia. Sharon was a lesbian mother, and her own mother sued for – and got – custody of Sharon’s son. The judge (with the Dickensian name of Buford Parsons) specifically noted that homosexuality was illegal in Virginia at the time, and he called Sharon “immoral.”

@Andrew – You beat me to the punch, but yes, I think it is more likely the Social Science Research journal could be convinced to retract the article than that Regnerus would voluntarily retract it himself. Especially given his apparent two-pronged (less charitably: two-faced) approach in dealing with different media audiences.

Tara,
I jsut took your information and e-mailed it to the entire group.
I would aks you to kindly send them an e-mail and ask them if they are going to publish this research then they MUST describe it in terms the general public can understand ans that isThis research studied mommy+daddy families where mommy and or daddy had a gay fling.

That is what I asked for. Clear langauge the public will understand that the survey respondents were raised in a mommy+daddy home.

WE ALL need to start e-mailing the Editors and Advisory leaders and tell them what you want. I have provided the e-mail addresses above.
DO.IT

You may remain anonymous, simply tell them that you have a good LGBT reason for needing to remain anonymous.

Fortunately the courts no longer consider being a lesbian to be a negative influence. But there are still those today who praise Lisa Miller for kidnapping Isabella Jenkins-Miller and fleeing the country to keep ‘that lesbian Linda Jenkins’ from having visitation with her daughter.

Since this “study” failed to locate even one child that was raised by a gay male couple, perhaps we should help Mr. Regnerus and share information on our own family.
Our datapoints:
Percentage of children who are happy, healthy and well-adjusted: 100%
Percentage of children on public assistance: 0%
Percentage of household members who report being content: 100% (although this drops to 50% when it’s bedtime).
True, we have only two children, so we’re not much of a nationwide sample.
But it’s still a bigger sample than Regnerus found!

To be fair, there are actually very few studies on gay male parenting, even if the sample population is self selected. Lesbians having children is simply far more common, so almost all studies focus on them.

Andrew,
I’m sorry, my earlier comment about Dr. Regnerus deserving “a hearty pat on the back” was really meant to be sarcastic. Dr. Regnerus only admits that his study doesn’t prove what he claimed in the study itself under great pressure, and even then he’s only admitting it in a very limited way, and only to specific audiences. To other audiences he keeps repeating his bogus claims as though they were valid.

I could have made it clearer that I was being sarcastic, but, with hindsight, I realize this isn’t something that should be joked about. Regnerus has a history of valuing ideology more than facts in his published work, and sarcasm risks being misread as letting him off the hook.

1) I sent off my first e-mail to the entire Editorial Board (shown above the e-mail addresses) asking them to make clear to the public that the study is about mommy+daddy and one of them has a gay fling. I asked them to use exactly mommy+daddy as that will be very easy for the public to understand.

2) Dr out of Utah writes back and says we won’t respond to StraightGrandmother” either disclose who you are or get lost.

3)I write back and decline.

4)I Get an e-mail from Darren Sherkat-

“I am assuming by the list that you are addressing the editorial board of a journal on which I sit. I appreciate your concern with this issue, as I’m sure everyone else does. You can rest assured that we’re also concerned about publications which may stray from the path of objective social science. I do not speak for the board or for its editors, however I do know that you have been heard, and your opinion is welcome. I think others will take it from here.

thanks,

Sincerely,
Darren Sherkat”
=================

5)I send another e-mail with about the statistic on Foster Care. Tara W showed the fact that women used to get their children taken away simply for being a lesbian and as late as 1995 Mary Ward’s daughter was taken away- solely because Mary was a lesbian. Also Tara points out that a lot of gay headed families adopt children out of Foster Care,so those children experienced time in Foster Care. [Nobody responds]

6)Nobody responds to my foster care concern

7)I send out this e-mail shown in its entirety

Dear Editors and Advisory Editors of Journal of Social Science Research,

June 11, 2012 National Review Kathryn Jean Lopez

Lopez: How is it different than a child growing up with a single mother raising him or a single father raising her? Or a grandmother or . . . there are all kinds of scenarios, of course? Why focus on same-sex households?

Regnerus: Yes, many scenarios are possible, and for kids whose mothers had a same-sex relationship, they were more likely to experience a variety of senarios, including living with grandparents. Why the focus on same-sex households? That was the key research question, basically. We wanted to know if the â€œno differencesâ€ thesis that has become almost an assumption in scholarly circles was true when put to the test of a large, nationally representative sample and a detailed survey of lots of different outcomes.

Lopez: So are young adults from step- and single-parent families much different? What is the gold standard?

Regnerus: Yes, adults who lived in step- and single-parent families exhibit a variety of differences, on average, from the gold standard of a married mom and dad (who are still together when the respondent is an adult). It calls into question, in fact, the common â€œwait till the kids are out of the house to divorceâ€ mentality.

Lopez: What is the reigning academic view of children in same-sex families? How does this study depart from that view? Do you anticipate engagement from academia?

Regnerus: No substantive differences, on things that matter. Thatâ€™s been the emergent view. This study definitely affirms that there is a gold standard. Yes, I anticipate engagement from scholars, and that is fine and welcome. I think there is plenty we can agree on.

Over at TNR, someone named Molly Redden openly and unashamedly calls for Mark Regnerus to be marginalized for daring to publish in a peer-reviewed journal a new study of family structure which was reviewed by serious family scholars. This used to happen behind the scenes, not in public. Itâ€™s both weird and ugly. And Molly is so open about it!

Excuse me? I didn’t see any Gold Standards? Is that what the Peer Review saw? Did peer review see in this data that a heterosexual mother and father produces Gold Standard Children and married gay and lesbian couples are what? Silver? Bronze maybe? Is that what the research what the data proves?
~SGM

8) Surprisingly(?) after the Gold Standard quotations were sent out I got an e-mail back from Dr. Wright. This is the same Dr Wright that Scott Rose points out has written what a threat to Marriage is if same sex couples marry. Who has also written about an promoted State laws for a separate Marriage License a “Covenant Marriage License.” Below is the e-mail I received from Dr. Wright.
==================
Dear SGM,

You and all other critics and commentators on the Regnerus study are invited to prepare a serious science-based summary of your concerns and issues and submit that for review and possible publication in a future issue of Social Science Research, which is the normal way in which controversies surrounding scientific papers and findings are aired and resolved. In the meantime, may I please request that you limit your communications just to me and the author? My editorial board is not directly responsible for the publication of the Regnerus paper so copying them on your communications does not accomplish anything worthwhile.

I think we would all be well served to read the rebuttals to the research. Interesting to me was the Amato review when he gives full disclosure and says he was a paid consultant for 2 days designing the questionnaire. I think Scott Rose raises a good question WHO were the Peer Reviewers?

Here are the titles to their reviews:
â€œWhat can we learn from studies of children raised by gay or lesbian parents.â€ by David J. Eggebeen

â€œThe well-being of children with gay and lesbian parents.â€ by Paul R. Amato

Do you see how the title wrongly infers that it is the well-being of children raised by parent(s). The logical assumption is that it is mommy+mommy or daddy+daddy. In fact this research is completely on mommy+daddy and one of them has a gay fling.

Please consider writing to them and asking them to change the Title to their article so that it is clear to the public that the relationship of the parents was mommy+daddy.

Would be interesting to see some discussion/reportage of the accounting for that >$750K worth of Far-Right money–how it was spent, how much of it found its way into the author’s pocket. Would be interesting to see what the going rate for academic integrity is these days.

In it he alerts us to a new New Family Structures Study website which I have not even had a chance to look at, only opened up. We need all eyes on this new website.http://www.familystructurestudies.com/

I think I am going to post this on all the Regnerus topics on Box Turtle. Let’s say we all work together and make a terrific website where we collect all this information on the Regnerus’ Study.

We crowd source this and everybody helps. I think what is missing is a lot of comments on the research by other Sociologists. We can all take a State and then call all the Universities in that State and speak to Sociologists there and ask them to provide their feedback on the research.

Other people can work on collecting up all the direct quotes from Regnerus.

Oh and shouldn’t we collect up all the places the data is being misreported? I saw for example a quote something like, “Well this study proves that pedophilia is rampant with gays”

And what about a website? Should we buy a domain name or should we use Blogger or Word press or something? If we hosted this separately how much would that cost us in bandwidth if a lot of people visited? Does anybody have idea on this?

Let’s set this up and organize this so it will be real easy for lawyers from our side to have a good reference point to jump off from.

What else? Do you like this idea? Who will help? I don’t mind if this is a part of Box Turtle and they are getting recognition for this. But I do think to do this right it is to big for the few guys at Box Turtle we need a lot more helping hands than just those guys. Whadda think?

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